Rich Franklin on UFC 93 main event: "I thought I won the fight"

Rich Franklin left his Jan. 17 UFC 93 main-event fight with two gashes in his head, nine stitches, a scratched cornea, blurry vision, a temporary eye patch and a stinging defeat.

In his first interview since the split-decision defeat to Dan Henderson, Franklin said his wounds will heal just fine. However, disappointment over the loss won’t.

“Honestly, I thought I won the fight,” Franklin today told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com).

In the main attraction of the event, which aired live on pay per view from The 02 in Dublin, Ireland, Henderson appeared to win the first round decisively. Franklin took the third, and though many credit Henderson with winning the second, that middle frame has been open to debate.

“I don’t think I won all three rounds, but I do think I did enough and should have won the second and third rounds,” said Franklin, who was taken down four times in the first two rounds. “He took me down, but he really didn’t do anything once he had me there. Nothing landed. I was pretty much able to get up every time he took me down. In the second round, I don’t think he landed one punch when he sat in my guard. He wasn’t real active. He just kind of covered me to make sure I didn’t get back up.”

Franklin was battered in that first round with two accidental head butts. They required a combined nine stitches after the fight. Although the gashes didn’t affect his vision, “I was tasting my own blood throughout the fight,” he said.

When the final judges’ scorecards were read, Franklin was shocked by the results. Not so much by the ultimate outcome – Henderson won via split decision – but more by the scores that led to it. Two of the three judges awarded Henderson the first and second rounds, and Franklin the third, 10-9. However, the dissenting judge scored all three rounds in Franklin’s favor.
Henderson took the split decision with scores of 29-28, 27-30 and 29-28.

“‘How could that happen?’ That was my first thought,” Franklin said. “How could one judge see three rounds in my favor and two other judges see two of the rounds in his favor?”

The other bit of controversy came in the final minute of the fight. With the momentum shifting in Franklin’s favor and knowing he might need to finish the fight to win it, Franklin mounted his offense. Henderson had slowed, and Franklin would land 28 strikes to Henderon’s eight in those final five minutes. But with approximately 40 seconds left in the fight, Henderson’s outreached hand caught Franklin deep in his right eye.

While Franklin was miffed by referee Dan Miragliotta’s instance that he wouldn’t get a full five minutes to recover, he had more pressing concerns while he tried to regain his vision.

“I couldn’t see at the time, but there was a situation with Dan (Henderson) walking over to his corner,” Franklin said. “I know when there’s an accidental foul like that, your opponent is supposed to be instructed to go to a neutral corner. All I know is that I heard (corner man) Matt Hume yelling at the ref to send Dan to his neutral corner, and I heard him yell it a couple times while Dan (Miragliotta) was checking on me. I told Dan (Miragliotta) to send him to his neutral corner since I heard Matt yelling and didn’t want Henderson standing in his corner getting instructions the whole time.”

Henderson was eventually sent to a neutral corner, and Franklin was given approximately two minutes to recover. But he wouldn’t be the same, and his momentum came to a screeching halt.

“It didn’t matter how much time I took,” Franklin said. “Flat out, I just couldn’t see out of my right eye any more. It was a complete blur like someone throwing water at your face. In the last 40 seconds, I had no depth perception and couldn’t tell where anything really was. There was no way going forward for me I was going to finish the fight.”

Franklin is still bummed he wasn’t given more time to recover, but he
doesn’t hold it against Miragliotta (“I think he’s an excellent referee
and did a great job in that fight,” Franklin said), nor does he think
it would make much of a difference.

“I just didn’t want to go to the judges’ scorecards with 40 seconds left,” he said.

After the fight, Franklin had his eye checked out, and once returning to his home near Cincinnati, he learned there would be no long-term damage.

“I had full ophthalmic exam after the fight, and then I had to do follow-up [on Monday] when I got home,” said Franklin, who’s posted photos of the injury at AmericanFighter.com and RichFranklin.com. “There was no retina detachment – just a severe scratch on the cornea that will heal up on its own. It’ll be fine. … The eye is one the fastest healing organisms in the body. I think within a week, things will be normal. I’m still a little blurry. But each morning I wake up, I can see marked improvement in my eye.”

Franklin claims he suffered no real damage in the fight – aside from the heat butts and eye poke. And while they certainly played a factor in the fight, he’s fairly confident all the blows were accidental.

“I would like to thank Dan and I clashing heads and the eye poke – I’ve never pegged Dan as a dirty fighter or anything like that,” Franklin said. “But I’ve had people call me and say, ‘I’m not so sure about that.’ I haven’t watched the fight on film, but I like to think Dan did that accidentally.”

With the victory, Henderson joins Anderson Silva and Lyoto Machida in the small group of fighters who have defeated Franklin in a nine-year, 28-fight career. Franklin failed in his attempt to avenge the loss to Silva, and he’s recently said he wants to avenge the loss to Machida, which came at a December 2003 event in Japan.

Does he now want to avenge the loss to Henderson, as well?

“Oh yeah,” Franklin said. “I want a rematch, and I wish it were a five-rounder.”

For now, though, Franklin is undecided on his future. Having recently moved from middleweight to light heavyweight, he would have found some direction with a win at UFC 93. Up for grabs was a coaching slot on the upcoming ninth season of “The Ultimate Fighter,” which would have included a drop back to 185 pounds for a season-ending match-up with fellow coach Michael Bisping.

With that opportunity gone, does Franklin want to stay at 205 pounds or drop back to 185, where he held the UFC title from June 2005 to October 2006.

“At this point in time, I’m still [digesting] this decision and really haven’t given it any thought,” Franklin said. “But the first thought that comes to my mind is that that’s up to the organization. I just want to put on good fights for the fans.”

Dann Stupp is editor-in-chief of MMAjunkie.com and the MMA beat writer for the Dayton Daily News.

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